Today we’ve got another great post from my good friend and personal coach, Ryan Faehnle. Ryan earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Exercise Science while serving in the U.S. Air Force.

After college, he became an NCAA Division I strength and conditioning coach at Miami University, where he helped athletes from 20 different sports (from football to ice skating to powerlifting) achieve their physical goals.

His abilities were acknowledged from the highest level when famed Olympic strength coach Charles Poliquin welcomed Ryan to his staff.

Coach Ryan has lectured internationally on training athletes, fat loss, hypertrophy, nutrition, energy systems, and supplementation. Ryan has been running a private consulting business for 5 years and has coached both athletes and coaches in the professional ranks and the Olympic Games. I believe in Ryan so much that he’s been single-handedly designing my training and nutrition programs for the last two years!

Without further ado, allow me to hand the reigns over to Ryan.

~Vince

Hey guys, Coach Ryan here to talk about strategies for activating weak or non-responding body parts—underdeveloped muscles that you’re unable to contract properly. These are things that I learned from world-class physical therapists and osteopaths while dealing with injuries I sustained as a result of non-responding body parts due to some congenital hip and shoulder joint deformities. While these injuries were definitely frustrating, I view setbacks as an opportunity to learn something new.

Whatever the cause of your weak or non-responding body part(s) (see my last post, Top 6 Body Part Specialization Mistakes, for a full list of causes), the strategies I’m about to share with you will allow you to re-educate your muscles to contract properly. Once you re-educate those non-responding body parts, you’ll no longer struggle to develop them and you can get back to “normal” training. That is, once you can contract your muscles properly, you can put these strategies on the shelf.

1. Daily limb-only activation drills

Weak body parts are often those with poor innervation—the nerve supply itself is inadequate and/or the signal from the brain to the muscles is weak. You can do all the extra sets you want, but until you improve innervation, your weak body parts will likely remain weak.

You must perform daily activation drills for these weak body parts. (This is not my idea—I got it from the best physical therapist I know.) First, put the weak muscle into its fully shortened position. Then, contract that muscle as hard as you possibly can for 10 seconds. Repeat for a total of 10 sets of 10-second isometric contractions. Do this every single day, preferably twice per day.

These are limb-only drills—do not use any weight here. You need to learn how to contract without resistance before you learn to contract against resistance.

2. Contracted position isometrics with forced eccentrics

Once you can get a good limb-only contraction, the next step is learning how to contract in the shortened position (this requires a partner). Make sure you continue to do the limb-only drills as well.

Using biceps as an example, we could use a preacher curl here. Curl the weight up, perform a 3-second isometric contraction, then have your partner apply a LIGHT force to push you through a full eccentric range of motion while you actively resist with PERFECT posture (i.e., everything else is locked down; the only movement occurs at the elbows).

Eccentric exercise recruits only about half of the motor units compared to concentric exercise, but it causes them to contract much harder. This will produce a bit of soreness which will help you “feel” the muscle working, even the next day.

What’s a “light” weight? To give you an idea, if you typically use 100 lbs for 6 reps on preacher curls, start with about 30 lbs. Keep in mind, you must choose an exercise that allows for tension in the shortened position.

3. Stretched position isometrics

Once you know how to contract in the shortened position, you need to learn how to contract in the lengthened position.

Taking the biceps as an example again, we could use incline dumbbell curls. Curl the weight up about 2 inches and contract as hard as possible for 6 seconds. Isometrics allow you to develop tension at a specific joint angle and there is carryover approximately 10 degrees in either direction from the angle at which you’re contracting.

These stretched position isometrics will allow you to develop full control over the first 30 degrees of the movement. You should continue to apply strategies 1 and 2 as well.

4. Slow concentric tempos

Using a slow concentric tempo (the phase of the lift where the load is travelling away from the floor) allows you to develop tension through the full range of motion. Take approximately 5 seconds to go through the concentric phase and be prepared to cut your weight in half.

These should be done early in the training cycle as overall tension is relatively low—while slow concentrics are great for re-education, they won’t directly build muscle.

Slow concentrics also make a great post-surgery protocol to fill the gap between therapy and full programming. They allow you to train safely and minimize the risk of re-injury since the loads are significantly reduced.

5. Submaximal effort workouts

Submaximal effort means you don’t train to failure or exhaustion. For example, using a weight that you could lift for 10 reps to failure and only doing 6 reps with it. This allows us to increase the volume of work we perform while utilizing perfect technique and practicing muscular contraction through a full range of motion.

Let’s compare training to failure with submaximal effort:

3 sets to failure with your 10 rep max: 10 reps on the first set, 7 on the second, and 5 on the third for a total of 22 reps

8 sets of 6 with that same load gives us a total of 48 reps—more than DOUBLE the volume and with PERFECT execution

There is a time and a place for pushing your limits and going balls to the wall, but there is nothing wrong with spending a few weeks working sub-maximally for a given body part—especially when going to failure on your weak body parts almost ensures that you’ll end up using other muscles in addition to the target muscle.

6. Low-load, long-duration stretches for joint capsule

Sometimes a muscle doesn’t fire because of poor joint positioning. For example, when you lift your arm out to the side and then over your head, many people think it’s just scapular movement and humeral abduction, but there is actually a more subtle movement happening at the joint called “inferior glide” where the head of the humerus “glides” away from the acromion as you lift up.

Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of inferior glide—I’d never heard of it either until speaking with a physical therapist. Just using the shoulder as an example, if you are so bound up that you can’t inferior glide, your serratus anterior and rotator cuff will not activate as well.

Low-load, long-duration stretches help with joint mobility because they not only impact the muscles, but they impact the joint capsule. These must be done for a minimum of 4 minutes (yep, they’re boring as heck).

These are pretty tough to describe, but a few examples are the sleeper stretch for your shoulders and banded shoulder and hip traction. Search for “Kelly Starrett” (physical therapist) on YouTube or look for his book, Becoming A Supple Leopard, to see this stuff in action.

Post your comments and questions below! We would love to hear from you.

Vince and I put together a really unique resource for you guys to develop your weak body parts—a collection of 9 specialization programs (one for each body part) that basically FORCE your lagging body parts to grow.

Now, I can tell you right now that this program is NOT for you if you’re going to ask about cardio recommendations or cutting during the specialization phase.

So, how do you train for maximal muscle growth in a short period of time?

Simple! Train a muscle group for 3 days in a row (that’s not a typo!) using a wide variety of training protocols to elicit maximal muscle fiber stimulation, all while doing maintenance-only work for the rest of your body.

That’s right, you can only focus on ONE area of your body at a time if you want to develop those lagging body parts. Try to do too much and you’ll just end up spinning your wheels or—even worse—injured!

After you complete your 6-week specialization program, you’ll need to focus on a more evenly spread workout or specialize on another body part before going back to the same one.

Heck, if you want to, you can pick your 3 weakest body parts and simply rotate between doing specialization cycles for them every 18 weeks so that you’re constantly improving your weak spots and balancing out your physique!

Are YOU ready to take your lagging body parts to another world of size and muscularity? Then the Vanity Specialization System is your next logical step!

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How To Get Rid of Lagging Body Parts for Good, 4.2 out of 5 based on 17 ratings

Hi Vince’ For starters. I am aged 89, living on an Australian government pension, so I cannot afford a PT. I managed to keep my 26″ waistline from my early 20s until I was in my late 70s. I used to work overseas quite often as I am a palaeontologist. After a trip to Russia in the countryside where I was constantly being ‘looked after’ on a typical Russian diet heavily based on carbs, my body did not respond to my normal post-trip rehab, usually based on a couple of training marathons a week for about a month, so now I’m stuck with 33″. When HypotrophyMax first came out, I joined and tried to complete the program but without a PT I could not manage the full program. My results were disappointing to me, but I did learn some very useful tips.

Recent chronology: 2012. Mid year I decided that as I had been competing in two sports at masters level for many years and winning medals, it might be a good idea to try another sport before I became too old (sports were athletics, mostly long distance, and gymnastics, apparatus, 2 different, both trampolines as only 2 required at my age). Looked at 2 other sports that had to be rejected for various reasons. The 3rd sport was INBA even though I knew no one competing. They opened up an 80+ division for me so my first ever bodybuilding competition was in October at the Queensland state titles. I was not totally surprised to win a first as I had no competition. 2013. Did my first INBA Australian Nationals, results as above. 2014. Did my first INBA Worlds at Nitra Slovakia, results as above. The Australians awarded me a certificate for training a world champ, namely myself, as I did my own training program. 2015. Entered German GNBF (= German Natural Bodybuilding Federation which has INBA as one of the member codes), comp at Wiesloch, near Heidelburg. The organiser had competed at Nitra and remembered me. 2016. I hope to go to the INBA Worlds in Budapest in May. I am doubly qualified through INBA Australia and through the German GNBF. I have felt a very slight twinge of guilt but it is not my fault if no one else climbs upon the stage when I do. Funding is very tight but the Australian pension includes a component for cigarettes and prescription drugs, neither interests me in the least, I’d rather spend what money I have on something pleasurable.